VMware
previewed two new offerings — VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts and VMware
Cloud Foundation for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) that will
run on AWS Outposts, enabling customers to build and deploy in customer
data centers in an “as a service” model with rich, enterprise-class
capabilities. Both solutions will leverage AWS Outposts, new fully
managed and configurable compute and storage racks built with Amazon Web
Services (AWS) hardware that allow customers to run compute and storage
on-premises, while seamlessly connecting to the rest of AWS’s broad
array of services in the cloud. Together these offerings will enable
customers with a consistent infrastructure and operational experience
across all VMware and AWS cloud environments.

“VMware’s vision is to provide customers with consistency of
infrastructure, operations and developer experience, enabling them to
build and run any application wherever the business requires. This
empowers them to maximize the value of their IT investments and achieve
better business outcomes,” said Mark Lohmeyer, senior vice president and
general manager, Cloud Platform Business Unit, VMware. “As part of our
broader hybrid cloud strategy to deliver Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC)
infrastructure as an end-to-end service across the data center, cloud,
and the edge, on industry-leading hardware, we are pleased to extend our
collaboration with AWS and the value we can deliver our joint
customers."

“VMware Cloud on AWS has seen great momentum since we introduced it
together in 2017, and this marks another step forward in our
collaboration to enable customers to run VMware Cloud on AWS locally on
AWS Outposts,” said Sandy Carter, vice president, EC2 Enterprise
Workloads, Amazon Web Services. “Customers have been telling us that
they want an extension of their VMware Cloud on AWS environments
on-premises, using the same hardware, the same interfaces, the same
APIs, and the same instant access to the latest AWS capabilities the
minute they become available, without having to manage hardware or
software. With AWS Outposts, we are delivering a seamless, integrated
hybrid experience.”

Driving Consistency from Data Center to Cloud to Edge
The public cloud brings numerous benefits that help customers accelerate
their digital transformations, including the elimination of the
operational overhead of managing infrastructure; access to innovative
cloud services for application development, deployment and management;
an OPEX financial model that can eliminate hefty upfront financial
investments; and the ability to consume infrastructure in a self-service
manner and scale environments elastically. VMware Cloud on AWS delivers
these customer benefits today and takes them a step further with the
operational consistency, familiarity and enterprise-robustness of proven
VMware technologies in the AWS Cloud. Many applications, however, must
reside on-premises due to requirements such as latency, data gravity and
ownership models, and therefore have historically been excluded from
offering these public cloud benefits. VMware recently announced Project
Dimension, now in Beta, to extend VMware Cloud to deliver SDDC
infrastructure as-a-service to on-premise locations, including data
center and edge environments. Now, VMware and AWS are partnering to
enable SDDC infrastructure as-a-service on AWS Outposts.

VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts will bring consistent hyperscale cloud
infrastructure and innovative services to the data center in a jointly
engineered solution that can eliminate the customer burden of managing
on-premises hardware. VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts will be a
fully-managed VMware SDDC as a service powered by VMware Cloud
Foundation that includes a comprehensive set of software-defined
services for compute, storage, networking, security, and cloud
management running on AWS Outposts in customers’ data centers or
co-location facilities. VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts will support
virtual machine-, container-, and Kubernetes-based applications across
the hybrid cloud. It leverages the same software stack, control plane,
API’s, and managed service as VMware Cloud on AWS and will be sold,
provisioned, operated, and supported by VMware or one of its partners.

Bringing VMware’s Proven Enterprise Capabilities to All Native Amazon
Environments
Today, customers can purchase a wide variety of VMware solutions that
help drive consistency of networking, security, and operations in Amazon
EC2 environments, including VMware NSX, VMware CloudHealth, VMware
vRealize Cloud Management Platform and Wavefront by VMware. VMware Cloud
Foundation for EC2 will be a new integrated solution that combines these
capabilities and others with existing VMware data center integrations,
and extends them across all Amazon EC2 environments, including Amazon
EC2 running on Outposts. Natively built for all EC2 workloads, VMware
Cloud Foundation for EC2 will help unify critical areas of networking,
security, cloud management, data protection and application development
across EC2 environments, and enable customers leverage proven data
center technologies as they move native AWS environments to on-premises
data center.

With
VMware Cloud Foundation for Amazon EC2, customers will be able to
seamlessly connect and better secure all Amazon EC2 workloads with NSX
and VMware AppDefense, and gain full visibility and insights into
network traffic with VMware vRealize Network Insight. The solution will
include VMware’s cloud automation, management and operations services to
enable customers to analyze and manage cloud cost, usage, security and
application performance, streamline application delivery, and better
control risks across cloud environments. Cloud Foundation for Amazon EC2
will enable customers to leverage existing investments and tools to
unify backup and disaster recovery for both vSphere and Amazon EC2
workloads in the cloud and on native AWS Outposts. Finally, VMware Cloud
Foundation for Amazon EC2 will extend VMware’s Kubernetes services
across Amazon EC2 on-premises and cloud environments, enabling customers
to have a common application development platform across on-premises and
public cloud environments with access to rich VMware, AWS, and partner
services.

Availability

Both VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts and VMware Cloud Foundation for EC2
are expected to be available in 2H calendar year 2019.